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You Have the Right to Maintain Privacy: How the U.S. Government’s Development and Advancement of Unwarranted Domestic

Spying Programs on Millions of Innocent Americans is Illegal and Unconstitutional !!!!A thesis submitted to the Department of Political Science !

By !DeAndre Joseph Horton !!!!!!!!

In partial fulfillment of the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Political Science !May 2014

Introduction The purpose of this research paper is to expose the reader to elements of national security

that are meant to protect the nation, but have been doubled into domestic spying tools employed by

the U.S. government. My thesis serves to inform the reader on how the US government’s domestic

surveillance undermines the fundamental principles upon which a liberal democracy is built upon.

It encourages free thought while fostering an informed population of scholars in the domestic and

international realms of politics.

Beginning with an empirical account of the one event that issued in this era of electronic

surveillance as a means of counter-terrorism—the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on 11

September 2001—I establish the real-world context that led to the formation of the Department of

Homeland Security, as well as the development and implementation of various sophisticated and

powerful means of surveillance in the 21st century. I expose the reader to a historical timeline of

the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program, graphs on the calculations on modern

terrorism trends, polls on how Americans view their right to privacy compared to the state’s interest

in investigating possible terrorist threats, and a chart illustrating how the NSA uses it’s programs to

clone and split copies of electronic communications for its own record and analysis purposes.

My research not only dives into the purpose and goals for the National Security Agency and

Department of Homeland Security—the two major government entities that I argue infringe most

upon the constitutional rights of citizens—but it also gives an account into various lawsuits filed

against these organizations mainly on principles regarding the Freedom of Information Act, so as to

demand more transparency among government institutions. For example, the case of Jewel v. NSA

where millions of American citizens unknowingly and unwarrantly had all means of conversation—

telephone calls, text messages, instant messages, emails, and various other electronic

communications methods—were recorded and stored by the NSA via huge telecommunications

companies such as AT&T and Verizon. I then dive into an analysis of terrorism post-9/11 to analyze

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its evolution through today and, more importantly, how the population has and continues to

perceive it as a threat. I also introduce the case of Wilner v. NSA where 23 American attorneys

were subject to unwarranted surveillance solely for representing individuals detained at

Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.

In my analysis of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), I use the cases of the EFF v.

the DHS, where the DHS and Department of Transportation (DOT) employed very sophisticated

Predator drones to local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies without exposing certifications

and authorizations explaining the use of such drones domestically. I then introduce the natural born

right of every human being to that of privacy, which further establishes the definition upon which

my central theme rests—to preserve the American people’s right to privacy through the dismantling

of domestic spying programs. Furthermore, I shed light into the most recent and developing case of

illegal and unconstitutional domestic surveillance practices in regards to the CIA being accused of

spying on Senate computers, offering this case scenario as possibly the most realistic chance we as

a nation have of tearing down these repressive tools and harmful policies used to undermine the

liberal democracy of the state, as well as the rights of every natural born U.S.-citizen today.

Finally, I end with a normative approach to how the American people should discourage the

development of such domestic surveillance programs to preserve their fundamental rights outlined

in the Constitution of the liberal democratic republic of the USA. I describe how today’s liberal

democracy runs and operates in light of all counter-terrorism policies, practices, and infrastructures,

offering the threats that they pose to the continuing and legitimacy of the United States democratic

structure of government.

!Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 At 8:45 on a clear Tuesday morning, an American Boeing 767 crashed into the north tower

of the World Trade Center in New York City. Only 18 minutes later, a second Boeing 767 appeared

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in the sky, sharply turning toward and smashing into the World Trade Center’s south tower. By

10:30 that morning, both towers had crumbled to the ground, engulfing all of lower Manhattan in a

thick black smoke and filling the surrounding 5 blocks in burning debris. The attack would go on to

take the lives of close to 3,000 New Yorkers, including emergency response officers, and injure

almost 100,000 more civilians. That day, September 11, 2001, would immediately issue in a new

world era of counterterrorism that would grow to influence American policy so much that it would

raise question to the integrity of the liberal democratic republic of the United States of America that

the Constitution stands to protect (history.com 2010).

The attacks on September 11th had direct and indirect implications on U.S. governmental

structures. In the weeks after 9/11, President George W. Bush authorized the National Security

Agency (NSA) to conduct a range of surveillance activities inside the United States, which had

been barred by law and agency policy for decades. In 2005, the New York Times exposed the NSA’s

spying program for the very first time. In response, President Bush admitted to a small aspect of

the program in which the NSA monitored, without warrants, the communications of between

500-1,000 people inside the U.S. with suspected connections to Al Qaeda. Other aspects of the

program, however, were not aimed at targeted individuals suspected of terrorism, but perhaps

millions of innocent U.S. citizens who were never suspected of any crime (Risen and Lichtblau

2005).

!The National Security Agency According to their official website, the National Security Agency was established by

President Truman in 1954 with the purpose of collecting, processing, and disseminating intelligence

information from foreign electronic signals for national foreign intelligence and counterintelligence

purposes, and to support military operations. From its inception to the turn of the millennium, the

NSA only had one documented incident of illegal domestic spying, which was resolved with the

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establishment of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). From the New York Times, "The

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, was enacted in 1978, passed in response to

revelations by the Church Committee showing widespread abuse of government wiretaps, and to

growing concerns on the part of the Supreme Court over eavesdropping practices. The law governs

the surveillance of people in the United States for the purpose of collecting intelligence related to

foreign powers. A secret court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, was created to

hear requests for such warrants. Safeguards were put in place to ensure that investigators pursuing

criminal matters did not obtain warrants under FISA that they could not get from an ordinary

judge.”

All of this changed immediately following the 9/11 attacks. The culture of domestic spying

began to shift at the NSA, with its post-9/11 approach being one that circumvented all federal

statutes and the Constitution as long as there was some visceral connection for looking for

terrorists. In the three years alone following Bush’s authorization of the NSA’s implementation of

domestic spying as a measure of counterterrorism, the intelligence agency monitored the

international telephone calls and e-mail messages of hundreds, if not thousands, of people inside the

United States without warrants, justifying this by claiming that the agency still sought warrants for

obtaining records of completely domestic communications. As Timeline 1.0 shows, this claim

would be refuted by various accounts of warrantless domestic spying that would only be more fully

exposed later in 2009 via a leaked NSA inspector general report. Furthermore, the table gives an in

depth look into the activities of the NSA and their Domestic Spying Program from it’s inception to

today.

The leading organization in this fight to demolish all domestic spying programs, especially

employed by the NSA is the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). As stated on the EFF website,

they are a donor-funded U.S. 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that champions user privacy, free

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expression, and innovation through impact litigation, policy analysis, grassroots activism, and

technology development. Since they were established, in 1990, they have used the unique expertise

Timeline 1.0—Timeline of NSA Domestic Spying !*Source: Data collected by the Electronic Frontier Foundation

* https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/timeline !

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06/05/2013—Secret Court Order Revealing Spying of All

U.S. Verizon Calls Leaked

06/06/2013—PRISM Program Revealed: NSA Tapping Into Internet Companies' Systems,

Mass Collecting User Data

06/11/2013—ACLU Files New Lawsuit Against

NSA Spying

06/09/2013—NSA’s Boundless Informat Tool to Record and Analyze

Spying Revealed by Edward Snowden

06/27/2013—The Guardian Releases Draft NSA Inspector

General Report Detailing Complete History of Domestic

NSA Spying

07/11/2013—Guardian Reports on Microsoft's Cooperation

with U.S. GovernmentXKEYSCORE Revealed

08/09/2013—Guardian Reveals Legal Loophole NSA Uses to Spy on Americans

08/05/2013—Reuters Reports on DEA's Use of Data Collected by NSA

08/07/2013—Reuters Follow up: IRS also

Uses Data DEA Receives from NSA

08/15/2013—Washington Post

Reveals NSA Internal Audit

Showing Thousands of

Violations

09/01/2013—New York Times Reveals AT&T Calling Records Database Used

by DEA Goes Back 20 Years

08/21/2013—Office of the Director of

National Intelligence Releases FISA Court Decision Detailing NSA's Violation of

the Fourth Amendment

09/05/2013—Guardian Reveals How NSA and GCHQ Attack Encryption

Standards and Hack

09/30/2013—Guardian Reveals NSA Stores

Metadata of Millions of Web Users for up to a Year

10/02/2013—New York Times Reveals NSA Tracked Cell-

Phone Location of Americans for up to Two Years

10/11/2013—FISA Court Renews

Order Collecting All Americans' Calling Records

11/14/2013—News Reports Reveal CIA

Collecting Bulk International Money

Transfers Using Patriot Act

11/21/2013—Senate Judiciary Committee Holds

Hearing on NSA Spying

12/04/2013—Washington Post Reveals NSA Collecting 5 Billion Records of Mobile

Phone Location Daily

12/10/2013—Washington Post Reveals How NSA

Turns Browser Cookies Into Surveillance Devices

01/03/2014—FISA Court Renews Order Collecting All Americans' Calling

Records

01/16/2014—Guardian Reveals NSA Collects Millions

of Text Messages

01/27/2014—NSA Spies on Users by Obtaining Information

from "Leaky" Mobile Apps

NBC Reveals GCHQ Tapped Into Fiberoptic Cable to Spy on Youtube Users

02/06/2014—FISA Court Modifies Section 215

Program After President Obama's Request

03/17/2014—Former Church Committee

Members and Staffers Call for a New Congressional

Investigation into Intelligence Collection

03/18/2014—The Washington Post Reveals the NSA's MYSTIC

program

03/27/2014—President Obama Releases an

Official Statement on Section 215 Bulk

Metadata Collection

03/28/2014—Director of National Intelligence Clapper Confirms NSA Conducted Warrantless Searches of

Information Collected Under Section 702

04/02/2014— Admiral Michael S. Rogers Assumes Role of Director of

NSA

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1954—President Truman establishes the NSA

1973—Supreme Court rules warrants are required for

domestic intelligence

1975—Senate “Church Committee” investigation uncovers illegal domestic

spying by NSA

1978— FISA signed into law, protecting Americans

from domestic spying

2001—Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 200109/12/2001—Culture against

domestic spying shifts at the NSA

10/04/2001—President Bush signs order beginning NSA’s

Domestic Spying Program (DSP)

Mid-Oct 2001—NSA begins secretly approaching

Telecom companies to participate in the DSP

Late Oct 2001—Companies Start Sending Internet and Telephony

Content to NSA

Summer 2002—AT&T Technician Discovers NSA Is Working Inside AT&T

Facilities

Late 2002—Telecommunications Companies Formally Enter

Voluntarily Agreements with U.S. to Give Data to NSA

01/01/2003—Narus Surveillance Equipment Installed in Secret Room in AT&T’s San Francisco Facility

07/17/2003—Sen. Rockefeller Writes to VP Cheney Questioning

Legality of Program. Cheney Does Not Respond

09/25/2003—Congress Cancels "Total Info

Awareness" Surveillance Program Due to Privacy

Concerns

Late Sept—Parts of the Cancelled "Total Information Awareness" Program Quietly Moved into DSP

Late 2003—Selected FBI and CIA Employees Join

NSA Team

Early March 2004—Concerns Grow Over the Program in the

Justice Department

03/11/2004—White House Approves 45-Day Extension

of NSA Spying Without Justice Department Approval

03/19/2004—First Day of Three Month Period When NSA Stops Collecting Bulk

Internet Metadata

07/14/2004—Secret Surveillance Court, Foreign

Intelligence Surveillance Court, Signs First Order to Resume Collection of Bulk

Internet Metadata

21/16/2005—New York Times Exposes NSA Spying to the Public for the First Time

12/17/2005—President Bush Confirms Existence

of NSA Spying

12/23/2005—New York Times Reveals NSA Spying Program is Much Larger Than President Bush Acknowledged and that Companies Gave Backdoor

Access to Their Domestic and International Communications

Stream

01/17/2006—New York Times Reports NSA Program Leads FBI to

Hundreds of Dead-Ends and Innocent Americans

01/20/2006—AT&T Whistleblower Mark Klein Goes to EFF With Evidence of AT&T's Involvement in NSA Spying

02/05/2006—USA Today Names the

Telecom Companies, Including AT&T, MCI

and Sprint, Which Helped in NSA DSP

05/11/2006—NSA Collecting All

Americans' Phone Calls for Database

May 2006—Phone Companies' Voluntary Agreement to Hand Over

"Bulk Metadata" to Government Ends

01/17/2007—FISA Court Rules It Will Now Oversee Certain Aspects of Program

08/03/2007—Protect America Act Passed by

House and Senate, Expands President's

Wiretapping Abilities08/05/2007—Protect America

Act Signed Into Law

07/09/2008—Congress Passes FISA Amendments Act, Giving Telecom Companies Immunity and Expanding Wiretapping

07/11/2008—ACLU Files Lawsuit Challenging

Constitutionality of FISA Amendments Act

01/20/2009—President Obama Takes Office

03/02/2009—FISA Court Forces NSA to Obtain Court

Approval for Every Metadata Search

01/06/2011—NSA Starts Construction on Massive Data

Center to Hold the World's Intercepted Communications

10/11/2011—NSA Stops Internet Metadata Collection,

Continues Collection of Internet Content

04/15/2012—New York Times Reports NSA Still

Collecting Purely Domestic Communications

07/20/2012—Government Admits NSA Spying Violated Constitution

of leading technologists, activists, and attorneys in efforts to defend free speech online, fight illegal

surveillance, advocate for users and innovators, and support freedom-enhancing technologies, filing

more than 250 legal cases in defense of these Constitutional rights that advanced technology has

and will continue to infringe upon more and more each day. Most notably, they sued the NSA and

other government agencies on behalf of AT&T customers in Jewel v. NSA.

!Jewel v. NSA Filed on 18 September 2008, Jewel v. NSA aimed at ending the NSA’s dragnet surveillance

of millions of ordinary Americans while holding accountable the government officials who illegally

authorized it (EFF.org). The case was filed on behalf of Carolyn Jewel and several other AT&T

customers who claimed their constitutional rights were violated by the U.S. government via the

NSA’s unauthorized surveillance of their telephone and internet activity. The plaintiffs (represented

by public interest and the private counsel of the EFF) allege that this was a joint effort by major

telecommunications companies, outside of the procedures of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance

Act (FISA) and without authorization by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC).

According to the case summary provided by the United States Courts website, they also allege that

the defendants have unlawfully solicited and obtained from telecommunications companies the

private telephone and internet transactional records of those companies’ customers, indicating who

the customers communicated with, when they communicated, and for how long the conversations

lasted, among other sensitive information. Using their nationwide network of sophisticated

communications surveillance devices that carry the telephone and internet communications of

millions of Americans not suspected of any crimes, the defendants continue to acquire the content

of a significant percentage of phone calls, emails, text messages, instant messages, web

communications, and other communications, both domestically and internationally, of practically

every American who uses the internet and/or phone system today.

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The government sought to block the suit outright, arguing that the information needed to

litigate the plaintiffs’ claim was protected under the states secret privilege evidentiary rule that

protects sensitive information obtained by the state in the interest of national security—despite the

fact that Congress already created secure procedures for courts to review sensitive evidence in suits

alleging unlawful domestic surveillance (ie. in-camera reviews). In January 2010, Judge Jeffrey S.

White initially dismissed the plaintiffs’ claim because without the evidence needed to make this

claim, there was no legal standing to proceed in court. On appeal, the Ninth Court of Appeals

reversed the district court’s dismissal on legal standing ground, finding that the plaintiffs did have

standing, and remanded “with instructions to consider, among other claims and defenses, whether

the government's assertion that the state secrets privilege bars this litigation” (Jewel v. NSA). On 8

July 2013, the District Court granted the plaintiff’s motion for partial summary adjudication—on

the basis that the defendants could not dispute the material facts of the case—and rejected the

defendants’ state secret defense. However, the defendant’s motion to dismiss the plaintiff’s

statutory claims on the basis of sovereign immunity—a legal doctrine by which the sovereign or

state cannot commit a legal wrong and is immune from civil suit or criminal prosecution—was also

granted by the District Court. As of 19 November 2013, the plaintiffs’ First and Fourth amendment

claim remain pending.

The plaintiffs claim that the defendants’ electronic surveillance program violated the First

Amendment, Fourth Amendment, separation of powers, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

(FISA), the Wiretap Act, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act or the Stored

Communications Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act. The First Amendment to the

Constitution of the United States of America dictates:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances (U.S. Constitution). !

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Aside from the program’s obvious infringement on one’s freedom of speech, it also violates one’s

freedom to peaceably assemble. Freedom of assembly is the freedom of association—the right of

any group of people to join together for a particular purpose, ranging from social to business, and

usually meant to be a continuing organization. The question that arises here is about what

constitutes a “joining together” of peoples. In the digital era of today, is it not rational to broaden a

definition of “joining together” to include digital representation as actual agents of our persons?

For example, when you engage in communications via a telephone call, instant message, text

message, or email, among various other forms of virtual communication, you are not physically

assembling with the person(s) you are communicating with, but the infrastructure which you use to

communicate acts solely on your behalf—you have control over what information is shared

from your end—thus qualifying that as an agent. When these telecommunication companies

implement new technologies to create digital clones of your conversations for their own record and

analysis (See Chart 1.0), especially without any just reason, that is a violation your First

Amendment right to peaceably assemble.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America dictates:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized (U.S. Constitution). !The argument here is blatantly obvious: warrantless domestic wiretaps and surveillance of millions

of innocent Americans without their knowledge is a clear violation of their Fourth Amendment

Constitutional right as a citizen of the USA. The rebuttal to this argument is that there is probable

cause on the grounds of the Terrorist Surveillance Program, which is part of the President’s

Surveillance Program, which is conducted under the overall umbrella of the War on Terrorism.

Founded in 1999, the New America Foundation is an American nonprofit, nonpartisan

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Chart 1.0—Model of NSA’s Interception Centers !Source: The Domestic Surveillance Directorate at http://nsa.gov1.info/surveillance/

(19 April 2014).

public policy institute and think tank focusing on a wide range of issues, including national security

studies, technology, asset building, health, energy, education, and the economy. The organization is

based in Washington, D.C. and, according to their study on the NSA’s bulk surveillance program’s

execution of preventing terrorism, they conclude that a review of the government’s claims about the

role that NSA “bulk” surveillance of phone and email communications records has had in keeping

the United States safe from terrorism shows that these claims are overblown and even misleading.

They go further into an analysis of 225 individuals recruited by al-Qaeda, or a like-minded terrorist

group, that have been charged with an act of terrorism in the USA since 9/11, stating that the

controversial bulk collection of American telephone metadata, which includes the telephone

numbers that originate and receive calls, as well as the time and date of those calls but not their

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content, under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, appears to have played an identifiable role in,

at most, 1.8 percent of these cases. So, how is it that the judicial system has allowed this domestic

spying program to continue for more than a decade when the only semi-justifiable claim they have

for it’s continuation has been proven to be ultimately ineffective in it’s purpose? Ultimately, it all

can be summarized as follows: the U.S. government has infringed upon the Fourth Amendment

rights of millions of innocent American citizens via unwarranted and unreasonable search and

seizure of their communication records through illegal domestic surveillance programs.

The staple of the liberal democracy of the United States of America is our three-branch

government structure which all carry separate and independent powers and responsibilities so as to

not conflict with one another. With this separation of power comes the system of checks and

balances—allowing for one branch to limit another so as to prevent any branch of government from

becoming supreme to the others. These checks allow for presidents to veto legislation or appoint

new judges, Congress to impeach the president or change law, and the judiciary to declare acts

unconstitutional. If the federal government has domestic-spying powers concentrated in the

executive branch, with little oversight, the President can easily make use of this infrastructure to

collect data on members of Congress, or any political enemy essentially, and use that information to

strong-arm politicians or further his own political agenda. Such power in the executive branch

seriously undermines this system of checks and balances that is a staple of the structure of our

government. With this concentrated power, our system of government could easily veer toward

what James Madison described as the definition of tyranny in The Federalist No. 47, “the

accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands.” This mere

presence of power does not prove that it has actually been abused by the Obama or Bush

administrations, but given the secrecy surrounding such programs and intelligence communities, it

is fair to conclude that it is possible that if such an abuse of power did/does occur, outsiders would

likely never know. In fact, there is one account in which this temptation—that is the access to

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extensive power with very little risk of being exposed—has already proven to overpower our

nation’s leader, which, in this case, even led to the formation and passing of FISA. As history

would dictate, Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States, used federal resources to spy on

political and activist groups; and as the saying goes, “history does have a way of repeating itself.”

The longer the general population of the United States does not stand up and collectively fight for

the disbanding of this infrastructure, the greater a threat this will continue to become to the

separation of powers within our government.

Despite the fact that there are legitimate legal arguments that prove the NSA’s domestic

surveillance program infringes upon Constitutional rights of millions of Americans, as well as poses

a major threat to the structure of U.S. government, along with the violation of various governmental

acts already signed into law, Jewel v. NSA is still being tried, some five plus years after it was

originally filed. What does this say about the way our government is run? Not only does it tell

Americans that their Constitutional rights are in fact privileges, not only does it display the grossly

unbalanced system of power and control in the government, but it also broadcasts to the world and

our nation that our government has no limitation of power because they can now hide any and all

immoralities behind “The War on Terror.”

!Post-9/11 Terrorism As stated earlier, it is widely known that the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, along

with the digitalization of the world today, is the reason behind the development and implementation

of illegal domestic spying programs, especially by the NSA. In their New York Times article on

President Bush’s secret order to widen domestic monitoring, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau report

that officials said the Bush administration views the operation as necessary so that the agency can

move quickly to monitor communications that may disclose threats to the United States. Defenders

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of the program say it has been a critical tool in helping disrupt terrorist plots and prevent attacks

inside the United States.

!Graph 1.0—Homegrown Terrorism Against the U.S.

Number of Attacks

!Source: Calculations based on data from the RAND Database of Worldwide Terrorism Incidents, at http://www.rand.org/nsrd/projects/terrorism-incidents.html (20 April 2014). ! According to calculations based on data from the Research And Development (RAND)

Database of Worldwide Terrorism Incidents, and shown in Graph 1.0, incidents of homegrown

terrorism—extremist violence perpetrated by U.S. citizens or legal U.S. residents, and linked to or

inspired by al-Qaeda’s brand of radical Sunni Islamism—have decreased in the aggregate since

9/11. Since the database only began collecting data on domestic terrorism in the USA beginning in

2001, Graph 1.0 only shows cases of homegrown terrorism from 2001 to their most recent report in

2009. During this time span, there were 93 accounts of homegrown terrorism. With the number of

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0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009

33

13

18

7

12

1 0

3 4

Graph 2.0—Domestic and International Terrorism Against the U.S., 2001-2009: Fatalities and Injuries

!

!!

!!!!Source: Calculations based on data from the RAND Database of Worldwide Terrorism Incidents, at http://www.rand.org/nsrd/projects/terrorism-incidents.html (20 April 2014). !attacks reaching its peak in 2001, the number steadily decreases to 0 in 2007, only increasing

slightly with no more than 4 attacks in 2008 and 2009.

Most terrorist attacks against the USA occur from outside of the state’s borders. In fact, as

Graph 2.0 shows, international terrorism caused far more American fatalities and injuries than did

domestic terrorism in the USA from 2001 to 2009. Domestic terrorism constituted for only eight

deaths while international terrorism claimed 3,861 American lives—more than 482 times the

number of domestic terrorist fatalities. Furthermore, of these 3,681 fatalities, approximately 77%

can be solely attributed to the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Looking

at the statistical results of the injuries caused by domestic terrorism vs. international terrorism

against the United States from 2001 to 2009, the same analysis as was made with examining the

American fatality statistics can be seen. Domestic terrorism injured only 53 Americans, compared

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FATALITIES INJURIES

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

Domestic International Domestic International

5,107

3,861 Total

2,770

879Excluding 9/11

attacks8 53

to the 5,107 injuries caused by international terrorist attacks against the USA—more than 96% the

total number of that of domestic terrorism. Furthermore, of these 5,107 injuries, 9/11 accounts for

46% of the total number of injuries caused by international terrorism from 2001 to 2009—2,770 to

be exact. As Graph 3.0 shows, most acts of terrorism against the United States occur in the

international community. Since 1969, more than half of all U.S.-targeted international acts of terror

occurred in either Latin America and the Caribbean (36%) or Europe (23%), while the Middle East

and Persian Gulf account for only 20%, the last 20% being attributed to the collective regions of

Asia, Africa, and North America—the least of all acts of terrorism against the United States in the

40 years from 1969-2009 occurring in North America (4%).

Graph 3.0—International Terrorism Against the U.S., by World Region (1969-2009) !

Source: Calculations based on data from the RAND Database of Worldwide Terrorism Incidents, at http://www.rand.org/nsrd/projects/terrorism-incidents.html (20 April 2014).

!

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0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

Europe Asia Africa North AmericaLatin America and the

Caribbean

Middle East/

Persian Gulf

Number and Percentage of Total Attacks

1,034 (36%)

649 (23%) 590

(20%)

333 (12%)

148 (5%)

129 (4%)

The whole purpose of the NSA’s various domestic spying software was to collect data

intelligence of individuals with suspected ties to al-Qaeda, and similar terrorist organizations, in

effort to combat the “War on Terrorism” in the name of national security. If statistical analysis of

trends in terrorism worldwide basically dictate one central claim—the great majority of terrorist

attacks against the USA come from outside its borders—why, then, does the United States

government still employ domestic surveillance programs to collect data on it’s own citizens today?

Data shows that homegrown terrorism is proving to be less of a threat to America’s national

security, while the threat of terrorism from the international community is drastically proving to

pose a greater threat to the state, year after year. Terrorism has been the focal point of various

institutional developments that have, as a collective, gradually infringed upon many rights of not

only American citizens, but human beings as a whole: the greatest example being that of the

establishment of Guantánamo Bay detention camp.

!Wilner v. NSA Wilner v. NSA, filed by Thomas Wilner and fifteen other attorneys who provided legal

representation to individuals detained at Guantánamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba, was a Freedom of

Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the United States NSA and Department of Justice (DOJ).

According to the official complaint filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), “Plaintiffs

represent men detained at the U.S. Naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba as part of the ‘war on

terror.’ Upon information and belief, plaintiffs’ electronic and/or telephonic communications have

been monitored by defendant agencies and records of those communications have been compiled

and retained by the defendant agencies because of plaintiffs’ representation of detainees and

plaintiffs’ international communications with clients, released detainees, family members of

detainees and/or organizations, business and individuals affiliated with detainees outside of the

United States.” Filed on 17 May 2007, the suit demanded that the government comply with

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requests made to turn over all records of the NSA’s unwarranted wiretapping gathered on 23

attorneys who have represented or currently represent detainees at Guantánamo.

According to the CCR, the Bush Administration told Congress that attorneys were not

categorically excluded from surveillance under the NSA Program. In addition Philip Shenon

reported in his 2008 New York Times article “Lawyers Fear Monitoring in Cases of Terrorism” that,

“the Justice Department does not deny that the government has monitored phone calls and email

exchanges between lawyers and their clients as part of terrorism investigations in the United States

and overseas,” also reporting that "two senior Justice Department officials” admitted that “they

knew of a handful of terrorism cases since the Sept. 11 attacks in which the government may have

monitored lawyer-client conversations.” In this case, the NSA and Department of Justice both

refused to acknowledge the existence of documentation related to whether the individual lawyers

were being subjected to warrantless surveillance. When the CCR filed, the government defended

the suit stating that any allegations to the existence of records relating to unwarranted surveillance

of the attorneys could be neither confirmed nor denied, a phrase coined into legal doctrine as the

Glomar response. This raised the question, before the Supreme Court, of whether or not the

government could use the Glomar response as a means to adequately refute such requests, even

though any such wiretaps and surveillance are illegal and unconstitutional.

The NSA’s wiretapping and surveillance of these American attorneys violated one of the

oldest legal doctrines in this nation: that of attorney-client privilege. Attorney-client privilege is the

requirement that an attorney may not reveal communications, conversations, and letters between

oneself and ones client, under the theory that a person should be able to speak freely and honestly

with their attorney without fear of future revelation (Hill 2002). In any case, this privilege requires

an attorney, and entitles a client, to not reveal any information that was exchanged during any

attorney-client contact. It is so respected in the realm of the legal system of the United States that

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the only way an attorney may be compelled to breach this privilege is through compliance with a

court order.

The fact that conversations between the plaintiffs and their clients were subject to illegal and

unconstitutional surveillance, simply because they involved detainees at Guantánamo, was a serious

undermining of one’s Sixth Amendment right to legal counsel, especially since the Supreme Court

ruled, in Brewer v. Williams, that “one gains the right to legal counsel at or after the time that

judicial proceedings have been initiated against him,” and that the right to legal counsel implies the

“right to an effective assistance of counsel.” By hamstringing attorney-client privilege, the

government implicitly fosters a climate where the attorney cannot effectively provide legal counsel

for his client. Furthermore, the threat of the use of unwarranted surveillance seriously hindered the

attorneys’ efforts to gather evidence, as it provided to be a huge deterrence for witnesses oversees to

speak freely over the telephone, knowing the likelihood that the U.S. government would be

listening in on and recording their conversation(s). On 4 October 2010, the Supreme Court granted

judgment to the government’s Glomar claim, accepting that they had legal right to refuse to either

confirm or deny the existence of records “relating to ongoing or completed electronic surveillance

or physical searches” relating to any of the plaintiffs individually (CCRJustice.org).

Throughout the past decade, it has become evident, through various cases tried from the

levels of the District Courts up to the Supreme Court, that the National Security Agency, and the

U.S. government, engage in illegal, unconstitutional, and unethical surveillance of millions of

innocent American citizens on a daily basis. While the NSA is the leading force behind domestic

spying programs in the United States, it is also fair to include the Department of Homeland Security

in this discussion of how the reemergence of terrorism and advancement technology have led to

policy makings and practices of unwarranted domestic surveillance on unknowing Americans not

suspected of any criminal activity.

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The Department of Homeland Security “The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has a vital mission: to secure the nation

from the many threats we face. This requires the dedication of more than 240,000 employees in jobs

that range from aviation and border security to emergency response, from cybersecurity analyst to

chemical facility inspector. Our duties are wide-ranging, but our goal is clear—keeping America

safe.” (DHS.gov). Equivalent to the interior ministries in other countries, the U.S. Department of

Homeland Security is a federal government cabinet position—created in response to the terrorist

attacks of September 11th—with the sole purpose of protecting the state and its territories from acts

of terrorism, man-made accidents, and natural disasters. Its stated goal is to prevent, prepare for,

and respond to domestic emergency situations, especially that of terrorism. Focusing more on what

is possible instead of what is probable, the DHS, as many national security scholars would claim,

has the tendency to create widespread fear without making Americans any safer. According to

Benjamin Friedman’s article on Homeland Security in Foreign Policy magazine, “the assertion that

terrorists continue to case American targets stems from the idea planted in the minds of Americans

—by the [DHS] and various media outlets—that terrorists remain hidden in the United States. But

6th FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress that there is little evidence that so-called sleeper

cells reside in the United States, even as he warned the U.S. Senate Select Committee on

Intelligence that he remains ‘very concerned about what we are not seeing.’ After years without a

terrorist attack, perhaps Americans can take what they are not seeing seriously. The assumption that

terrorists are flawless and ubiquitous results in unreasoned fear and overreaction. This ghost is

worse than the reality.”

This phenomenon of excessive fear of terrorism in the minds of millions of Americans,

perhaps, is a reason as to why the constituency has remained complacent with the various spying

and surveillance programs employed by the U.S. government. According to the latest national

survey by the Pew Research Center and The Washington Post, and shown in Graph 4.0, among

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Graph 4.0—Public Say Investigate Terrorism, Even if it Intrudes on Privacy !

Source: Pew Research Center and The Washington Post at http://www.people-press.org/2013/06/10/majority-views-nsa-phone-tracking-as-acceptable-anti-terror-tactic/ (25 April 2014).

1,004 adults, 62% say it is more important for the federal government to investigate possible

terrorist threats, even if that intrudes on personal privacy, while only 34% of adults say the inverse

is more important. These opinions have changed slightly since a similar ABC News and The

Washington Post survey in 2006 when 32% of adults said it is more important for the government to

not intrude on personal privacy, even if that means limiting its abilities to investigate possible

terrorist threats. The actual problem here arises when the U.S. government uses this fear as a tactic

to mask and distract the public from covert development of more advanced technology that doubles

as tools the state has the ability to use, at their discretion, to track and record your everyday

movements and interactions without you even knowing or suspecting. This problem is, in fact, an

!20

0

20

40

60

80

Jan 2006 Nov 2010 June 2013

Investigate Terrorist Threats Not Intrude on Privacy

65%

32%

68%

26%

62%

34%

issue that the Electronic Frontier Foundation has foreseen, and even filed suit on behalf of the

general public against the Department of Homeland Security for beginning to implement policy and

technologies intended for the execution of this new level of domestic and international surveillance.

!DHS and DOT’s Predator Drones On 30 October 2012, the Electronic Frontier Foundation filed suit against the Department of

Homeland Security, demanding answers about how and why it loans out its Predator drones to other

law enforcement agencies across the nation. According to details of the case listed on the EFF

website, “Customs and Border Protection (CBP)—a division of the DHS—uses and operates

unmanned aircrafts, also known as drones, inside the U.S. to patrol the borders with surveillance

equipment like video and infrared cameras, heat sensors, and radar. However, recent news articles,

as well as a report from inside the DHS itself, show that CBP is expanding its surveillance work,

flying Predator drone missions on behalf of multiple local, state, and federal law enforcement

agencies—including a county sheriff's department in North Dakota, the Texas Rangers, the Bureau

of Land Management, and the Department of Defense.”

Unmanned aircraft or drones come in many shapes and sizes, from as small as a

hummingbird to as large as a commercial airplane, and are designed to carry various types of

equipment that allow them to conduct highly sophisticated and virtually constant surveillance.

Some of the newer drones even carry high resolution “gigapixel” cameras that can “track people

and vehicles from altitudes of about 20,000 feet, can monitor up to 65 enemies of the State

simultaneously, and can see targets from almost 25 miles down range.” (Munchbach 2011). In

January 2012, when the EFF first filed suit against the Department of Transportation (DOT) to

release documentation on authorizations and certifications issued by the department for drone

operations within the state’s borders, EFF Attorney Jennifer Lynch wrote: “Predator drones can

eavesdrop on electronic transmissions, and one drone unveiled at DEFCON [in 2011] can crack

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Wi-Fi networks and intercept text messages and cell phone conversations—without the knowledge

or help of either the communications provider or the customer. Drones are also designed to carry

weapons, and some have suggested that drones carrying weapons such as tasers and bean bag guns

could be used domestically.” She went further to explain that “many drones, by virtue of their

design, their size, and how high they can fly, can operate undetected in urban and rural

environments, allowing the government to spy on Americans without their knowledge.” On 10

December 2011, Brian Bennet reported in his Los Angeles Times article “Police Employ Drone Spy

Planes on Home Front” that the CBP had used one of its Predator drones to assist the North Dakota

Nelson County Sheriff’s Department in finding three individuals suspected of committing a

property theft. In a later article on 28 April 2012, Bennet also reported that the CBP’s “drones often

are unavailable to assist border agents because Homeland Security officials have lent the aircraft to

the FBI, Texas Rangers, and other government agencies for law enforcement, disaster relief, and

other uses.” If these highly sophisticated Predator drones are being funded and developed for the

purpose of defense against serious threats to national security, why is it, then, that they have been

used for solving domestic petty crimes, especially to the extent that the agency charged at the

forefront of protecting our borders don’t have access to them?

In October of 2012, Jennifer Lynch filed a Freedom of Information Act request asking for

more information on these drone flights, more specifically who was flying them, where they were

being flown, and for what purpose(s), but to date, the Department of Homeland Security has not

responded to such requests. According the EFF’s website, that same day, she also “filed a second

FOIA lawsuit with the FAA, demanding the latest data on certifications and authorizations that the

agency has issued for public drone flights in the U.S.” Although the FAA did agree to turn over

some files after the initial suit was filed against them in January of 2012, the process remains

ongoing to this day. The agency’s slow response has meant that the information the EFF will

receive will be outdated by the time it is received, and unless a new suit is filed requesting more

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data, it is likely that most of the records from 2012 will not be included. Months after the EFF filed

the initial suit against the Department of Transportation, however, the lawsuit helped to uncover 125

drone certificates and accompanying documents from the Federal Aviation Administration, totaling

in thousands of pages of data.

Drones are sophisticated and powerful surveillance tools. They can be used to gather

extensive data on ones travel and communication records, and the American people need, and have

the right, to know more about how and why such Predator drones are being used to watch them. As

Lynch put it, the “FAA’s foot-dragging means we can’t get a real-time picture of drone activity in

the U.S.” and in doing so, the FAA, and the U.S. government, are yet again infringing upon millions

of innocent Americans’ overarching rights to privacy, including, but not limited to, their

Constitutional rights to freedom of speech and assembly, and to be secure in their persons from

unreasonable search and seizure.

!The Right to Privacy In order to assert that every American citizen, let alone every human being in the

international community, has the basic right to privacy, one must first establish a relevant and

applicable definition of privacy. While there are a multitude of definitions of privacy, differing

among cultures and individuals, common themes are shared alike. The Haifa Center for Law &

Technology is a renowned interdisciplinary center in Israel, dedicated to the study of the

interconnection between law and technology. In light of the digitally-centralized culture of today

and tomorrow, the following definition of privacy, provided by the Haifa Center for Law &

Technology, shall be adopted and used for the remainder of this paper: “the right to privacy is our

right to keep a domain around us, which includes all those things that are part of us, such as our

body, home, property, thoughts, feelings, secrets and identity. The right to privacy gives us the

!23

ability to choose which parts in this domain can be accessed by others, and to control the extent,

manner and timing of the use of those parts we choose to disclose.” (Yael Onn, et at. 2005).

What then, constitutes an invasion of ones privacy? According to The People’s Law

Dictionary, an invasion of privacy is “the intrusion into the personal life of another, without just

cause, which can give the person whose privacy has been invaded a right to bring a lawsuit for

damages against the person or entity that intruded.” While this does not protect public figures—

who through their celebrity, make their activities considered newsworthy in the public

eye—otherwise, non-public individuals have the right to privacy from: “a) intrusion on one's

solitude or into one's private affairs; b) public disclosure of embarrassing private information;

c) publicity which puts him/her in a false light to the public; d) appropriation of one's name or

picture for personal or commercial advantage.” (Hill 2002).

The government—through various agencies, and new policies and technologies

implemented in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11th—has repeatedly, unashamedly,

and unjustly stampeded on every U.S. citizen’s basic right to privacy since the wake of the new

millennium. While this hasn’t yet sparked widespread unrest in the public sphere, the private sector

has actively protested against these infrastructures that have been destroying the fabric of society

and advocated for the Constitutional, legal, and general human rights of all Americans on their

behalf. What would life be without something so basic as one’s right to privacy? On a daily basis,

any communication between you and anyone else being watched and recorded, all of your personal

information posted via social media being watched and recorded, and above all else, your every

physical move being watched and recorded.

To what extent will the American public tolerate the sacrifice of their natural born rights in

the name of national security—especially when such threats to national security, that are being used

as the basis for justification of these surveillance programs, have been proven to essentially be on

the verge of irrelevance anymore? Perhaps it will take a catastrophe to happen, in so far as the

!24

information collected being hacked and obtained by foreign powers. Or perhaps it will take

government agencies using the software to collect intelligence data on other government agencies,

as can be seen in the recent media coverage of the CIA spying on the computers of members of the

Senate Intelligence Committee.

!CIA Spying on Senate Computers According to Halimah Abdullah’s CNN article on the CIA searching U.S. Senate computers,

“The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, veteran Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein,

accused the CIA of secretly removing classified documents from her staff’s computers in the middle

of an oversight investigation.” Only speaking out about this issue out of reluctance because of false

media portrayal, Senator Feinstein spoke out about the accusation made by CIA Director John

Brennan that maybe the Committee obtained the document in an illegal way, while also

simultaneously denying claims that the agency ever searched the Committee’s internal network.

Senator Feinstein responded to this allegation strongly stating, “Our staff involved in this matter

have the appropriate clearances, handled the sensitive material according to established procedures

and practice to protect classified information, and were provided access to the Panetta Review by

the CIA itself. As a result, there is no legitimate reason to allege to the Justice Department that

Senate staff may have committed a crime. I view the acting counsel general’s referral as a potential

effort to intimidate this staff, and I am not taking it lightly.” (Abdullah 2014).

The issue here is that the Senate Intelligence Committee spent several years, starting back in

2009, looking into the practices of the Central Intelligence Agency after 9/11—those enhanced

interrogation techniques—also referred to as torture—as well as the CIA’s detention of people at

secret prisons around the world. Senator Feinstein said the CIA provided upwards of 6.2 million

pages to the Senate Intelligence Committee, but at some point, the CIA had questions about an

internal memo in the Committee’s possession. Wanting to know how the Committee received it in

!25

the first place, the CIA allegedly searched the Senate’s internal network and deleted more than 900

pages from file. Referred to as the Panetta Review, this internal CIA review raised various

questions about the agency’s own tactics. “What was unique and interesting about the internal

documents was not their classification level, but rather their analysis and acknowledgement of

significant CIA wrongdoing” Feinstein stated in her open address on the Senate floor. Normally a

strong ally for U.S. intelligence agencies, Senator Feinstein expressed her concerns that the CIA’s

search may have, besides the Constitutional implications, violated the Fourth Amendment, the

Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, separation of powers principles, as well as Executive Order 12333,

which prohibits the CIA from conducting domestic searches or surveillance (Abdullah 2014).

CIA Director John Brennan denied all allegations of computer hacking. According to the

Reuters article “CIA accused of spying on U.S. Senate intelligence committee,” Brennan claimed in

a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank that “nothing could be further from the

truth. We [the CIA] wouldn’t do that.” Furthermore, “In a letter Brennan wrote to Feinstein in

January [2014], which was obtained by Reuters, he acknowledged the data had been deposited in

the part of the CIA computer network to which Senate investigators had access but said he did not

know how this happened.” (Zengerle, et al. 2014). In light of recent electronic surveillance

revelations made by U.S. NSA contractor and fugitive, Edward Snowden, this dispute heightened

concerns about the effectiveness of congressional oversight of U.S. spy agencies. All in all,

Feinstein said she is going to move as early as possible to have her committee’s entire report

declassified and made available to the American public (Zengerle, et al. 2014).

!Theoretical Analysis of 9/11 Attacks For some time, the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on 11 September 2001,

and the War on Terror that followed, signaled a return to a world of realist security relations, given

the renewed emphasis on the use of force. Contemporary structural realists, such as John

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Mearsheimer, have acknowledged that realism, given its focus on states, has little to say about non-

state actors, such as “terrorists.” This can explain why, in fact, this electronic surveillance era came

to be in the United States. The Bush Administration, not even a year in office yet, had experienced

what history would deem the greatest single terrorist attack yet. Because of this, concerns with

strengthening the state became primary to concerns of individual rights and freedoms, for in the

realist frame of thought, there was no other way to secure the general public than to enforce the

strength of the state, doing so via military deployment, drone development, increased transportation

security policies and procedures, and, of course, electronic surveillance programs. While realism

can explain the actions of the state and its response to the attacks, it is limited, first and foremost, by

its assumption of a timeless objective condition of anarchy in which states are the primary actors

(Dunne 2010).

President Bush made an aggressive statement that went on to categorize the philosophy

behind his administration’s counterterrorism actions in his 20 September 2001 address to a Joint

Session of Congress: “We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every

nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the

terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be

regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” Many scholars, however, view what has been

coined as the “Bush Doctrine” as one of a spoiled child having a tantrum because his toy was

broken and thus, began stealing everyone’s toys in revenge. Political scientist and retired USAF

lieutenant colonel Dr. Karen Kwiatkowski wrote in her 2007 article “Making Sense of the Bush

Doctrine” that “we are killing terrorists in self-defense and for the good of the world, you see. We

are taking over foreign countries, setting them up with our favorite puppets ‘in charge,’ controlling

their economy, their movements, their dress codes, their self defense projects, and their dreams,

solely because we love them, and apparently can’t live without them.” How then, would one

!27

describe the liberal democracy of the United States today? Would it still be seen to uphold the

morals and rights enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights?

!How does the Liberal Democracy of the USA Operate Today? “We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice,

insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and

secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this

Constitution for the United States of America.” (U.S. Constitution). These were the first words

written by our founding fathers some two centuries ago in the Preamble to the Constitution of the

United States. Even though it is fair to keep in mind that there is no way that any of our founding

fathers could have even imagined the world that we now live in, it is even more fair to say that the

U.S. government is very different than the one they sought out in drafting the core documents of our

liberal democracy. Liberal democracies are forms of governments in which a representative

democracy operates under the principles of liberalism—protecting the rights of minorities and,

principally, the individual. Characterized by separation of powers into different branches of

government, free and fair elections between multiple political parties, the rule of law in everyday

life as part of an open society, and the equal protection of civil rights, human rights, civil liberties,

and political freedoms for all persons, a true liberal democracy often draws upon a constitution to

delineate the powers of government and enshrine the social order.

It is clear that our democracy has lost sight of these liberalist principles: government

agencies illegally spy on citizens not suspected of any crimes, undermine the fundamental

structures of government, and lack heavily in providing transparency. All in all, the liberal

democracy of the United States today is more concerned with the obsession of acts of terrorism on

the horizon than with the preservation of our human rights, civil rights, and civil liberties as

expressed in the founding documentation of our constitutional republic that is a liberal democracy.

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We do not live in a country where we can walk and talk freely, as per our First Amendment rights,

but instead live in one where big brother is always watching over our back and threaten to send us

to a secret, out-of-state prison if we say or do something not pleasing to them. We do not live in a

country where the items we inherently possess are truly in fact our own possessions, but instead live

in one where our property is searched and seized every single day: from our physical migrations to

our shared philosophies. Furthermore, we do not live in a country where the rights of the individual

and the minority are protected, but instead live in one where the general minority’s rights are always

exploited by the economic minority who control the vast majority of the country’s wealth. Do we

live in a truly liberal democracy as described in its technical definition? The answer depends on

who you ask. One thing that can be asserted, however, is that if, in fact, we aren’t living in a truly

liberal democratic society, we can reestablish one, but only if and when we truly want.

!Conclusion The U.S. government, through intelligence agencies employed to protect the nation from

foreign threats, infringes upon the rights of millions of innocent, every-day American citizens.

Their domestic surveillance programs are not only illegal—violating various Statutes, legal

precedences, and Acts signed into law—but unconstitutional, infringing upon native resident’s First

and Fourth Amendment rights, while also providing threats to the very structure of our government

—specifically that of the separation of powers.

The Bush Administration truly ushered in America’s reputation of being the “Policing State”

in the international community. Not only have we made enemies out of various foreign nations

because of a realistic approach to reassuring power through preemptive military strike, but will soon

make enemies out of the voting constituency who underpin this liberal democracy that we have

coined “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” If only our nation truly released the

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shackles of monitoring our every step and word, and stopped hiding cowardly behind the veil of

“terrorism” and/or the “war on terrorism.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Muhammad Ali, Howard Baker, and Jane Fonda; what do all of

these people have in common? Aside from the fact that these people are noticeably some of the

most widely-known persons of American history (civil rights activist and leader; sports icon; U.S.

Senator; and Emmy Award, and multiple Academy and Golden Globe Award winning actress), they

were all unknowingly spied on by their own government. If the general public of the United States

does not find reason to stand up and demand the termination of such programs and infrastructures

that hinder our freedoms and rights, while simultaneously threatening the undermining of the

structure of our government, then it won’t be very long before millions of Americans will also be

able to knowingly say that they share that same commonality. Until then, to the state, we will

always be suspect unless proven otherwise.

!"There are more instance of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent

encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." -James Madison, 1788

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Philip Shenon, “Lawyers Fear Monitoring in Cases of Terrorism,” New York Times, 28 April, 2008. !Risen, James, and Eric Lichtblau, “Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts—Secret Order to Widen Domestic Monitoring,” New York Times, 16 December, 2005. !Zengerle, Patricia, Doina Chiacu, and Mark Hosenball, “CIA accused of spying on U.S. Senate intelligence committee,” Reuters, 11 March, 2014. !

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